For the Wikipedians out there
I’ve written a piece for the Wikipedia Signpost about Citizendium– what’s been going on here, future plans, and why Wikipedians should care about Citizendium. If you’re a Wikipedian or ex-Wikipedian I’d recommend checking it out.
–Mike
The argument that it is good for Wikipedia to have competition is valid. However, there is a lot of it. The question you do not answer is why it should be Citizendium that should be fsvoured in this role. It is part of a saturated environment with Scholarpedia as its most obvious predecessor. If Citizendium’s language was Yoruba or Igbo, Swahili or Khmer I would agree. In the English language however it needs to proof itself among many others that are equally deserving.
Thanks,
GerardM
Comment by GerardM — August 1, 2007 @ 3:39 pm
Hi Gerard,
Since Scholarpedia operates under a significantly different collaborative model than Wikipedia and Citizendium do, I personally don’t see it as competing in the same arena. I don’t see Conservapedia as a true competitor to Wikipedia or Citizendium, either. However, I don’t mean to discount that there are other interesting wiki projects out there.
Comment by Mike Johnson — August 2, 2007 @ 10:12 am
Gerard, see http://blog.citizendium.org/2007/03/28/we-aint-elitist/ for why.
Comment by Stephen Ewen — August 2, 2007 @ 2:41 pm
Scholarpedia is similar but it is mostly invited articles. That is a small part of the citizendium model. One big difference is that non experts are heavily involved in citizendium too.
Which are the many others that are equally deserving? I can’t think of any off the top of my head unless you count the more specialized wiki’s that are out there. Not trying to play devils advocate here, i’d be interested to hear.
Comment by Chris D — August 2, 2007 @ 4:59 pm
Mike sez: “Since Scholarpedia operates under a significantly different collaborative model than Wikipedia and Citizendium do, I personally don’t see it as competing in the same arena.” I agree. I don’t think they are really collaborative at all, not in any robust way. I explain this at some length, comparing CZ with other models including Scholarpedia, in this talk. And Scholarpedia is hardly the relevant “predecessor” of CZ, if the intent of that is to say that somehow we took our cues from that. CZ came out of my work on Nupedia, Wikipedia, and the Digital Universe, as well as my own fertile imagination and many great original ideas contributed by our authors and editors. I would say, rather, that Scholarpedia came out of my own work, a month or two after the Digital Universe announced a scholarly general wiki encyclopedia, in late 2005.
Of course, the DU never came out with that project, which is the main reason I’m now officially on a leave of absence from the DU and working on CZ outside of their fold!
Comment by Larry Sanger — August 2, 2007 @ 10:44 pm